Trauma Informed Therapy is the Newest Psych Buzzword

“Trauma Informed Therapy is centered on the understanding of the emotional, neurological, psychological, social, and biological effects of trauma,” in the misleading idea that trauma experienced when young affects the mental well-being of individuals throughout life.

We call it misleading because while it is certainly true that trauma can affect one’s outlook on life, it is a mistake to think that this is a ripe field for psychiatric treatment just because psychiatrists and psychologists think there is no other treatment for it, when in fact the hardy resilience of children, and of adults, is often overlooked. Psychiatrists and psychologists think they have uncovered something new by focusing on the relationship between trauma and present-time adverse behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. The unfortunate aspect of this is that their “treatments” only make the matter worse.

Trauma focused therapy is a branch of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which as we’ve said before is a form of psychotherapy that attempts to modify dysfunctional emotions, behaviors, and thoughts — by evaluating for the person, challenging the person’s behaviors, and getting the person to change those behaviors, often in combination with psychiatric drugs.

Trauma therapy is a direct result of the alarming spread of the fraudulent diagnosis of PTSD – so-called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Originally applied to soldiers suffering from battlefield exhaustion, PTSD has become blurred as a catch-all diagnosis for some 175 combinations of symptoms, becoming the label for identifying the impact of adverse events (trauma) on ordinary people. This means that normal responses to catastrophic events have often been interpreted as mental disorders, leading directly to calling “trauma” the new “black,” and spawning an entirely new opportunity to expand psychiatric “treatment” to a broader patient population.

Why is this bad?

Psychiatric trauma treatment at best is useless, and at worst highly destructive to victims seeking help. By medicalizing what is a non-medical condition and introducing harmful drugs as a therapy, victims have been denied effective treatment options.

There is no better example of tyranny over the minds of men than what is being given to children and adults in the name of “help” through behaviorist programs such as CBT and Trauma therapy. The entirety of these psychological and psychiatric programs are founded on the tacit assumptions that mental health “experts” know all about the mind and mental phenomena, know a better way of life, a better value system and how to improve lives beyond the understanding and capability of everyone else in society.

The reality is that all these mental health programs are designed to control people towards specific ideological objectives at the expense of the person’s sanity and well-being. Do we really want to institutionalize mandatory psychiatric counseling and screening, which is where all this is heading?

Claiming that even normal behavior is a mental disorder and that drugs are the solution, psychiatrists and psychologists have insinuated themselves into positions of authority. If someone is exhibiting behavioral problems, there are many things that can be done besides the exclusive drug- and behavior modification-based options that are the backbone of mental health services today.

In fact, studies have indicated that many mental health consumers, that is people under the supposed care of some mental health provider, program or institution, have experienced traumatic, frightening, humiliating, or distressing events during their treatment or hospitalization. This is why CCHR encourages victims of psychiatric fraud or abuse to report these events.